For full disclosure, this following is a sponsored post.
Nothing differentiates a good beat from a great beat like clean, crisp sounds. The audio is the most important aspect to creating a great song. When listening to the freshest of tracks on sites like Brooklyn Radio, the music is rich with clean baselines and quality sound. That sound didn’t come from cheaply sampled music and sliced up songs. Some bits may have been cleanly sampled, but the music was recorded fresh. Radio ready beats can only be made one way, with the hottest sounds sampled with instruments played live.
Let’s say you are creating a beat and have a song that you want to sample, but you are serious about what you do and want to do things right. You know how to play most popular instruments, but where do start with the live instrument approach? You would start by going to a site like MusicNotes.com and download the sheet music of the song you are looking to sample. Established in 1998, MusicNotes.com has been keeping sheet music very much alive for the past 18 years. Over that time they have amassed a library of over 300,000 pieces of officially licensed digital sheet music and guitar tablature, and are currently servicing over 4.5 million artists, musicians, and producers around the globe. “I am a Steinway and Sons artist, have sold millions of recordings and had over 30 White House performances. Requests were made at a White House party for some Stevie Wonder tunes so I immediately pulled out my iPad, summoned Musicnotes.com and bought sheet music for “Overjoyed” and “Ribbon in the Sky”.” Says David Osborne, Pianist to the US Presidents.
Once you download the sheet music of your choice, you can either record each instrument that you need or use your keyboard and software to record the music for any instrument. MusicNotes.com stays current by constantly adding sheet music for the most popular songs so they are sure to have the sheet music you are looking for on most instruments. Once you are recording your own music you will be able to improvise and add your own creativity to the recording, making the sample truly original. There is a chance this process may take you longer at first, but with time that should change and the final product will always be leaps and bounds ahead of what you would have by just simply sampling, cutting, and placing. This approach will allow you the flexibility to expand your music and push your beats to the next level.
